


everything's the same (definition of insane)

by Neleothesze



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cannibalism, Character Death, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Merry Bad Ending, Murder, Original Character Insert, POV Alternating, Reincarnation, Self-Insert, Suicide, Theft, Time Skips, Transmigration, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator, Yandere, male yandere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-04-11 20:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19116799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neleothesze/pseuds/Neleothesze
Summary: "Something went wrong when transferring Hotaru's neural impulses into the newest iMind. Mind mapping technology had advanced by leaps and bounds and, yielding to her grandkids' pleas, sixty-four year old Kita Hotaru had finally signed the documents and set a date for the procedure.On the morning of the 2nd of June, in a small hospital bed, the anesthetic lulled mrs Kita to sleep.The wakeup was far more painful and sudden, a tiny body dropping in the middle of a dirt road."Reality isn't a creation of the mind. And yet here she is, sixty-four going on ten, forever young in a world where the young are the first to die.





	1. Prologue

**Prologue**

**(recording 00284-June-322.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

**R** eincarnation. Transmigration. Metempsychosis.

Whatever the name, something went wrong when transferring Hotaru's neural impulses into the newest iMind.

Mind mapping technology had advanced by leaps and bounds and, yielding to her grand-kids' pleas, sixty-four year old Kita Hotaru had finally signed the documents and set a date for the procedure.

On the morning of the 2nd of June, in a small yet tastefully decorated hospital room and a small yet comfortable single bed, the anesthetic lulled Mrs Kita to sleep.

The wake-up was far more painful and sudden, a tiny body dropping in the middle of a dirt road.

 _This… What is this? ...Is this me?_ she wondered, rubbing her back as she struggled to stand. Old aches and pains had disappeared, replaced by small, uncoordinated limbs her mind had yet to adjust to. _Am I inside some simulation?_ she huffed, laughing as she inspected the childlike body.

"Hello?" she called out.

Dirty shoes pinched her toes and the rough shirt made her itch. The morning breeze felt chilly through the threadbare clothes and Hotaru scratched her itchy arm, laughing at how real everything felt. As unpleasant as if she was actually wearing these smelly, ill-fitting clothes. Almost too unpleasant! Where was the promised neural damping?

"Excuse me! Hello!" she yelled again and strained her ears for an answer. Nothing. Nothing but the rustling of leaves and the chirps of crickets.

"I believe there's been a mistake! I apologize for making things difficult but I'd like to go back to my old body, please."

Walking this way and that, Hotaru waited. She owned her fair share of electronic devices, including an old console and VR set to play Daifugo/Daihinmin with the neighborhood ladies but this mind technology was far beyond her meager tech know-how.

 _What have I gotten myself into?_ she thought, rubbing her hands over her face and looking around in dismay.

The forested landscape was lovely, framed between distant mountains and the gleam of a sapphire sea - indistinguishable from the real world; this new body was young and seemingly healthy… but in the face of all this strangeness , even youth seemed unappealing.

Sōichirō-kun and Kaede-chan had sworn up and down 'Everything's totally safe, obaasan. And afterwards you feel hardly any pain! Sasana-chan from 42B said she broke her leg skiing and someone else had to point it out 'cause she kept trying to get up! You remember Sasana-chan, obaasan? She used to hide in the kitchen whenever Tamura-san dropped her off for an afternoon. At the last get-together she said she still uses the yakimeshi recipe you taught her. And speaking of...'

Oh, how her grand-kids could go on!

_Well, where's my pain reduction, eh? Did we buy some cheap knock-off?_

Still scratching here and there, Hotaru sat in the dew-covered grass and worked to take off those god-awful shoes. She was too old for this nonsense. A couple of mosquitoes landed for a bite and while she slapped and shooed the offending insects, her pants grew wet and clung, cold and heavy, to her already clammy skin.

 _What a terrible experience! What neural damping? What pain reduction?,_ she huffed. _Lousy product! 0 stars. Bad review!_

*-*-*

Over time, Hotaru learnt to live with a secret. Nothing was ever damped. But whenever she died, she woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is a quote from Deja Vu by Katy Perry.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

**(recording 09311-may-87D.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

Hotaru was in a gloomy mood. She'd held high hopes for this bastion of civilian society but it seemed even here in the capital, you couldn't walk ten paces without stumbling across shinobi of one sort or another. Whether a merchant needed strong help, tough guards, fast hands or a glib-tongue, they'd always turn up.

She huffed, stuffing straw around the weapons  with sharp, jerky movements. _Shinobi. Bah! She'd gotten their measure._

Exhibit A: as a beggar, Hotaru had been chased off by nin-thieves.

Exhibit B: as a nin-thief, she'd been beaten by shinobi guards

Exhibit C: as a junior shinobi guard, she'd been stabbed by rogue nin.

Exhibit D: as a rogue nin, she'd been blown up by hunter nin.

Nothing pointed towards exhibits E through Z being any better. Not for the first time, she wondered at the perpetually disobliging nature of this world and the curse of eternal youth.

Just this morning Hotaru's newest master, a bladesmith of some repute, had hired a Konoha team to escort Hotaru from town to town along the northeastern border, while she sold the weapons forged by his other apprentices.

Twenty swords, five axes or eighty kunai to a crate, ten crates to a scroll, thirty-six scrolls in a battered leather case no bigger than a cat. _Just enough weapons for the whole country to kill itself twice over_.

The team leader, a charming young man whose face she might have seen in her old Bingo book, introduced his team with smooth words and a practiced smile and then left to discuss some final details with master Setō. _Utterly charming but absolutely indifferent, a model shinobi, eh?_

Her mood lifted though, as one of the young ninja - the black-haired boy - jumped to offer his help.

"Kita-san, that looks heavy! Let me get that for you." Quick with a smile and eager to please, the boy started picking up swords from one of the weapon stands.

Meanwhile, the bubbly brunette was happy to chatter at her other teammate, trying to engage the stoic boy in conversation. Hotaru bowed her head to hide a smile. _Ah, young love._

"Thank you… Uchiha-san, was it? Help's much appreciated. The sooner I pack these up, the sooner we can be on our way. As for the weight... I used to think they were heavy, but lugging them around every day, you get used to it." Hotaru said, panting lightly from the strain.

The swords in his arms clattered as he whipped around. He examined her from head to toe, eyes lingering on her oil-streaked, stick-thin arms and the steel axe-head the size of her torso. Apathy - and a rising distaste for the shinobi lifestyle - meant she hadn't bothered to hone her body at all in this incarnation.

"Every day?! Master Setō makes you do this every day?" the boy whispered with badly hidden shock.

He looked so funny, the little murderer for hire outraged on her behalf. Hotaru stifled a laugh but couldn't help ruffling his hair as soon as she set the broad axe in the right crate.

"Hey!" he complained, trying to twist away without either dropping the swords or stabbing her by accident.

This silly boy! She hoped he didn't take offense but he reminded her so much of her son just then. _'Tou-chan makes you do this by yourself every day, kaa-chan?!'_ Yukihiro had shouted. She'd picked him up for a cuddle and a twirl. _'Are you worried about me, sweetie? Kaa-chan's a big girl, Yuki-kun! Look at how strong I am.'_

She supposed it did look odd, for a civilian child.

"Hahaha! Are you worried about me, young man? Hotaru's a big girl, Uchiha-san!" she said, lifting a sleeve and playfully flexing her arm. "Look at how strong I am. Hahaha!"

"Hn." Huffing, he swiftly turned back to work but as he seemed more embarrassed than angry, Hotaru resumed her packing with a smile.

Yes, this team seemed pretty interesting but she'd reserve judgement till they were out on the road, away from the scrutinizing gaze of society. The wilds, she'd found out, had a way of bringing out the worst in people.

 

* * *

 

Their sixth night camping out.

Most roads weren't safe anymore and Minato-sensei had them marching through the forests more often than not. They'd had survival training at the academy but that just meant Obito knew exactly what creepy crawlies he'd swatted off his arm or was going to dig out of his bedroll in the morning.

He wanted to whine, really, really wanted to whine but if the kid - the client - wasn't whining, and she was just some ten-year old civilian, he'd just look bad in front of Rin.

Kita-san was… a really weird kid, with her creepy smiles and old lady habits. _Weird but kind_ , Obito's mind whispered. _Gentle like my Rin-chan._

He frowned. _...Not_ **_my_ ** _Rin-chan. Why can't she see… why can't she see me-_ His pants rumpled under his clenched fists. It was an old question but one that still hurt.

 _Take a deep breath,_ he told himself. The goggles hid his misty eyes but he didn't want Rin-chan to see him cry, didn't want to embarass himself in front of the client.

A blink and suddenly there was a skewer under his chin.

"Uchiha-san, please try one. You seemed so focused on these… I experimented with some different seasonings and I'd welcome a second opinion."

Obito's eyes caught hers and Kita-san offered an understanding nod. They both knew it wasn't about the rabbit meat or whatever spices she'd rubbed on it.

He grabbed it with a loud "Thank you, Kita-san!"

"Tch! Call me Hotaru. Let's be friends!" Grinning just a touch too widely, she presented him with five more skewers, held as though she were offering a flower bouquet, clearly trying to cheer him up.

He could feel his face heating up. "I… haha."

"Go on." Kita-san encouraged, creepy grin unwavering. He searched her eyes but found no mockery. Just a strange girl trying to what… help him out? make a friend?

"Kita-san… I… There is..." he started when Baka-kashi quickly broke in.

"What the idiot's trying to say, is that shinobi are to keep a professional attitude towards the client at all times, Kita-san. …Obito, stop making the team look bad."

"Kakashi-kun. You're being too harsh-"

"Now, Kakashi-"

"If you keep defending him, Rin, sensei, he's never going to learn."

"Shut up, you bastard!"

Things went downhill from there but when his watch was over, Obito settled in his bedroll and his mind wandered back to the earlier talk and their weird client.

He looked across the clearing at where she slept swaddled in her old man nightclothes, an oversized flannel cap and button down sweater, that just made her look even younger than usual. Harmless. Cute.

 _Kita Hotaru,_ he thought, testing the sound. _Hotaru-san_ . _Hotaru-chan._ It was… nice. _Hotaru-chan. Ho-ta-ru-chan._

 

* * *

 

**(recording 09824-july-103.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

The summer days stretched into a slow routine of travelling, setting up shop, selling, packing up and travelling some more.

The act of spreading weapons of war was soothing and ironically void of any violence. Hotaru loved it.

Uchiha-san stuck close after that one evening when she'd offered him her food and Namikaze-san indulged him, giving him tasks that had him working alongside her most of the time.

He was a boisterous boy but he settled down quickly enough given a clear task and plenty of praise. He was hardworking too, but hungry for attention.

Well, Hotaru hadn't had a child to spoil since she'd arrived in this strange new reality and she could spare enough attention to make one person smile.

 

* * *

 

"Where do I put this, H-Kita-san?"

"Right there, please."

"Okay!"

Gesturing to a spot beside the small wooden stand, Hotaru-chan - _Kita-san_ ** _,_** he tried reminding himself - set her own crate down.

"There we go. Thank you so much, Uchiha-san." she exclaimed and reached out, warm hand gently patting his cheek. "Just my luck, to have such a helpful young man guarding me today!"

He tried to convince himself that it was the same embarrassing, old people-style praise she usually offered but that didn't stop his cheeks from burning.

At least Hotaru-chan - _Kita-san_ \- said nothing more, just started sorting the weapons by some arcane system that seemed to involve size, shape, sharpness but also weirder things like the colour of the grip or the smell of the material.

It was his turn to stand guard so he had better things to do than watch his client line up kunai but every so often his gaze would drift to her tiny hands or her swinging braid or her cute dress.

Afterwards, Hotaru-chan's lips turned up in a sweet, satisfied smile and he wanted to…

Shocked, he swiftly turned away. _What was that?_

 

* * *

 

**(recording 11630-september-C22.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

By the turn of autumn, they were back in the capital.

Most of Hotaru's shinobi guards looked happy to see this mission over and done with. Uchiha-san however, seemed torn between dread, displeasure and a mulish refusal to walk more than twenty steps away from her.

She'd grown fond of the boy during these past few months and he'd really blossomed under the attention. He seemed calmer and more self-assured. Hotaru wanted to laugh. The added dose of confidence came with a clinginess that was downright adorable - even if he saved it for when they were alone. _Shinobi rules and regulations and all that nonsense._

At least this was one kid who'd grow into a fine young man.

 

* * *

 

"I'll write to you." he reminded her for the third or fourth time, but he needed to make sure she remembered. Not that Hotaru-chan was forgetful ...or that she'd forget about him…because she wasn't… and she wouldn't but just, to make sure.

Obito was aware that he was staring at her, but she hadn't answered yet. He wanted more than some perfunctory nod. "I'll write to you."

"Yes, Uchiha-kun, and I'll write back."

 

* * *

 

Spring brought with it sad news. Kumo infiltrators had set off some heavy explosives in the capital. Two districts had burnt down before the flames could be subdued. One of the targets had been the forge of the famous bladesmith Setō Ichirō. Over a hundred people had died in the initial blast, with hundreds more injured.

"I'm so sorry, Obito. You'd been corresponding with the blacksmith's apprentice, Kita-san, right?"

"Yes. We're… we _were_ … friends. It's ok… Rin. I think I'd like to be alone now, for a while."

"...I'm here for you if you'd like to talk, Obito-kun."

"Yes. You're here. You're still here. I still have you, _right_ , Rin?"

"Of course you have me, and sensei and Kakashi-kun too. We're all here for you."

_Hahaha. Not what I meant._

_...And you know it._

 


	3. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning - mind the tags. But don't worry, things get better.

**Chapter 2**

**(recording 12409-march-141.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

Hotaru woke up in an alley, in the same dirty clothes and pinching shoes she always arrived in and just lay there, trying to forget the feeling of blistering skin... of burning alive. She _hated_ shinobi and _hated_ their explosives and _hated_ their fire.

Some sharp pebbles were digging into her back and dirt was getting in her hair but Hotaru was, if not happy, at least content, because it meant she _had_ hair and _was alive_ to feel the pebbles. Still…

“Good developers, on a scale from one to ten, would you like to know how likely I am to recommend this iMind to someone else?” she inquired, briefly indifferent of anyone hearing her talk to the sky. “If you beam me up I promise to explain, in long and graphic detail. What say you?”

The sky didn’t answer, unless Hotaru was expected to divine the reply from random cloud shapes and the possible promise of rain. “No? Well! Good day to you!”

Slowly, gently, scared that the pain might suddenly return, she rubbed her eyes, wiping away the few tears she couldn’t blink back, and tried to plan her new life.

By now, almost all her acquaintances would have been told that Kita Hotaru died in the fire.

No one had cared when Hotaru the Beggar had frozen under a bridge or that Hotaru the Thief had been beaten to death by an overzealous guard. However, Hotaru the Guard-turned-Missing-nin had forged some bonds… and Hotaru the Apprentice had grown to love Master Setō and her fellow apprentices. She’d cared for her neighbors, the Akiyama and Matsui families, and young Uchiha Obito too, whose weekly letters had been a balm to the soul.

It felt somewhat shameful to admit it, but at the time, Hotaru had grown cynical and disenchanted with human nature. Meeting the boy, spirited little ball of sunshine that he was, helping him conquer his insecurities, had thawed some of the ice.

Hotaru allowed herself one long, shuddering sigh.

She was tough, she’d move past this like she’d moved past everything else and maybe in a decade or so she’d travel to Konoha and see little Obito with a successful career and a family of his own, spoil his children too.

Till then, she’d find something to drown the memories of fire.

Water. Water sounded lovely.

Maybe she'd become a fisherman for a while.

 

* * *

 

**(recording 12863-april-AF1.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

Her journey south-east was lonely but ultimately uneventful. The escalating war had inevitably bloated the usual the bands of bandits with deserters and desperate men, armed them and made them bolder. They stopped roaming the forests of Hi no Kuni and started stalking its towns and cities instead.

Hotaru stuck to the trees, curled her tiny body in bushes when she slept and other than scaring some starving wildlife, made it to the sea unharmed.

Getting hired as a deckhand took planning and a bit of work. _Should I act cute to earn sympathy_ , she asked herself, _or reinforce my muscles with chakra and act tough?_

Something she hadn’t done in over half a century or something she’d last practiced two lifetimes ago?

...Chakra use proved the more successful gambit. One ship captain had actually backed away in alarm when she’d pretended to be a lost little girl in need of a home.

 _Shameful! As if this old lady were something terrifying_ , she grumbled to herself, trying out different smiles in front of her pocket mirror. _Look at these healthy teeth! I paid 2 million yen for my old implants and they didn’t look half as good!_

 

* * *

 

**(recording 13099-august-887.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

Mizu no Kuni wasn’t what she hoped for.

The line between civilians and shinobi was blurred enough that the military dictatorship of Kirigakure spilled into the everyday lives of the average citizen like the bulging bowels of some putrid fish.

Lawless brutality had been elevated to an art-form and Hotaru’s captain had the misfortune of inconveniencing one of Kiri’s most prolific murderers, the Kaguya clan.

The ship groaned and the sea churned under their terrible tantrum. Flotsam formed eddies in the shallow waters near the shore and Hotaru crawled, bruised and bleeding, inside a crate to hide from the psychopaths stalking the survivors. In the battered cargo hold, blood seeped from the crate of discount mushrooms from Kusa - "Perishables. NO RETURNS!".

Some hours later, a group of half-drowned Kaguya stumbled on a little girl curled up in the sand, still struggling to recover from the latest death.

They screamed and stabbed. Hotaru died. And died. And died begging to go back to Tokyo. _Please! Please, I’m right here!_

After a while, a delirious idea surfaced. _If you hit your head hard enough, does seeing double work in reverse or were the crazies getting fewer and fewer?_ The rest of her mind worked to protect itself and Hotaru finally passed out.

 

* * *

 

There was a cave in the clan's mountain and cages in the cave and children in the cages, a boy and a girl.

Kimimaro’s new companion was friendly and funny, even if she talked to the walls when she thought him asleep. The walls never answered and the door only opened for his family, not the mysterious Di-Velappa-san or Saiyan-Tisu-san, but he’d known that since he was little.

She cried when they took her out of the cage. Kimimaro worried but she looked fine when they brought her back, even if quieter and a little sad. Maybe she hated hurting other people too.

The girl sang pretty songs to him when he was hungry and making swords didn’t cheer her up like it did his cousins but if he gave her some finger bones, she made puppets and put on plays with heroes and villains and pirate ships that sailed in the skies to capture Suzaku, the Vermillion Bird - who always, always got away!

Kimimaro hadn’t seen a lot of birds, but they sounded nice and flying sounded even nicer and when he told the girl, she smiled and said her name was Hotaru and that meant firefly, and fireflies were flying beetles that glowed at night like little lanterns.

And Kimimaro wasn’t a stupid baby anymore but maybe, just once, he asked Saiyan-Tisu-san the Wall to take them out of the cave to watch the fireflies with Hotaru-neesan. Saiyan-Tisu-san was the meanest wall ever who didn’t even care that big sister had fallen asleep crying and Kimimaro spent the rest of the night throwing bones in the wall’s general direction.

 

* * *

 

**(recording 12409-october-141.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

Their jailers had brought them both out for a change. A fighting tournament had been organised, with the winner going against the sweet four-year old she sang lullabies to.

Eager cries filled the air as the contestants quivered with excitement. Hotaru, a contestant too against her will, felt old and over-tired.

When her turn came, they shoved her into the arena with a longsword - ‘for fairness’. She stared at the oversized weapon and the madman waiting impatiently on the other side of the arena. _I’ve been brought as the buffoon, I suppose._

The Kaguya’s experiments had left her with a persistent fear of pain... but Kimimaro-chan was sitting in the stands. He was going to see her die... and maybe if she did it fast enough, it would upset him less. Hotaru knew it was probably one of the dumbest ideas she’d ever had... but the sword was already in her hands... and she after struggling to raise it above her head, she let go.

 

* * *

 

His chest hurt so bad when Hotaru-neesan dropped the sword on her neck that he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe and he felt like falling but the world flopped first and shuddered and the arena exploded with white flames and the uncle who’d wanted to fight his big sister burned.

Kimimaro wanted to cry but crying never solved anything and some people cheered and some people booed as they pointed to the back, where Hotaru-neesan slumped against the wall.

“’Neesan!” he screamed and wrenched his shoulder from the hands trying to stop him from getting to his big sister. She looked so sad again. He didn’t understand. “You won.”

Hotaru-neesan sighed. She sounded so tired. “No, Kimi-chan.”

“But you did!!” Yelling hurt his ears but he’d been really, _really_ scared. His big sister said she loved him so she _wasn’t allowed_ to scare him like that. That had been very dangerous. Stupid big sister! People _died_ from getting their neck slit, didn’t she know that!

Hotaru-neesan must’ve finally realized she had to apologize for scaring him like that. She let him settle in her lap and hugged him close. ...This was better.

“Umm...When I get big and strong, will you teach me your jutsu?” he mumbled against her chest.

“What jutsu, Kimi-chan?”

“That jutsu with the weight and the rumbling.” Her hug was warm and he could hear her heartbeat go ‘ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum’ and it was the best feeling in the world. He hooked a few bones in her clothes to hold her even tighter.

“I didn’t use any jutsu, Kimi-chan. ...Just the sword.”

“Really?”

“Really, really. What’s this about?”

"Heh. If you didn’t cast that… ’Neesan...” he whispered, suddenly feeling sleepy “did you know that the world gets angry when you’re hurt?"

His big sister looked slightly curious but mostly confused. “What do you mean, Kimi-chan?”

“When the sword fell, it was like in the story you told me with the Great Gods, only Hisaki-ojisan was the thief. It got hard to breathe and the world shook and then the fire burst. That’s why the arena’s all scorched. And I was really worried… for a little while. You could have died!”

Hotaru-neesan frowned and huffed and kissed his hair but her words left him cold. “I did die, Kimi-chan.”

“No.” _It’s not true._

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t lie.” He hugged her tighter even when she hissed in pain. _Why would she even say that?_ “It’s not nice.”

“Kimi-chan. I die like anyone else. But if what you said is true, because the world... likes me very, very much, it puts me back together again. ...But it still hurts and it still makes me very sad. And I... wanted to make it as quick and painless as possible. And I’m so sorry if I scared you, sweetie. You can’t possibly imagine. But they will call me back. Only, the next time I have to go down-”

_No._

“-you can close your eyes-”

_No._

“-and count to twenty-”

_NO._

“-and your big sister will be right back.”

“No!” he screamed, but Hotaru-neesan was already walking towards the arena and he could only watch in horror as they made her fight again and again while they laughed and clapped and cheered.  
Kimimaro had never really understood his clan’s desire to kill before but his big sister’s eyes looked dead and she looked lost. If this was what it meant to be a strong shinobi, maybe he hated shinobi, maybe he hated all these people.

 

 


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

**(recording 14551-june-637.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

Hotaru had tried to live her life with quiet optimism.

As the only child of aging parents, well before thirty Hotaru’s family had dwindled to just herself and Hideyuki, her army veteran fiancé. His fifty-nine to her twenty-five had raised some eyebrows in their conservative neighbourhood - the stern, grey-haired older man with his smiling young wife - but Hotaru had felt safe and loved and she’d never regretted tying her life to a man with far different life experiences and a temperament diametrically opposed to her own.

When her son had aimed for a career in the entertainment industry, Hotaru had helped her old-fashioned husband make peace with Yukihiro-kun’s unconventional choice and soothed his temper whenever the tabloids spread lies, half-truths and shameful innuendoes about their boy.

She’d supported her love through his fight with cancer and relearned how to live after he left her behind.

Later, when Yukihiro-kun’s wife had divorced him, Hotaru helped raise his children away from the limelight and the paparazzi hounding her son. Sōichirō-kun and Kaede-chan had grown up on Hotaru-obaasan’s yummy cooking and patient parenting. Yukihiro-kun’s sweet, sensible children became level-headed young adults - even if they came to visit their old grandma by private jet and gifted odd, overpriced things like the newest mind-mapping tech. _...Worthless piece of trash that it turned out to be!_

Hotaru had tried to live her first life with quiet optimism but it felt like this new reality was trying its best to beat it out of her one short, lousy life at a time.

The weeks following the fighting tournament were spent in a daze. She slept in fits and starts, her unconscious mind busy replaying the most horrifying deaths like a gruesome _Greatest Hits!_ montage.

She was jumpy and irritable, spending hours at a time just pacing the length of her cage until Kimimaro said something that reminded her of the innocent little boy suffering on the other side of the cage - the little boy who was convinced that his family’s treatment was, even if abnormal, at the very least acceptable. Impotent rage was then added to the toxic cocktail of uncomfortable feelings and Hotaru silently cried herself into another fitful sleep.

 _They’re natural reactions to this sick, unnatural situation_ , she told herself. _It’s_ _nothing for this old lady to be ashamed of and nothing she can’t conquer._ _Ha!_

Huddled in the corner closest to the light, Hotaru spoke about their difficult circumstances to sweet little Kimimaro-chan, sharing her - highly edited -  thoughts and feelings about what she had gone though and gently, patiently disabusing him of the twisted beliefs the Kaguya had tried to instill. He was precious for more than his bloodline ability and deserved better than a locked cage in a sealed cave. This was a trial and trials existed to be overcome.

Hotaru made and discarded many escape plans but she couldn’t have anticipated that the Kaguya themselves would provide them with both the means and the opportunity.

On Kimimaro-chan’s fifth birthday they brought him out for their most daring raid to date, an assault against the seat of their hidden city. The boy they’d thought to nurture into a perfect weapon had cared little for their senseless violence even before he’d understood how shabily his family had treated ‘his Hotaru-neesan’. A mere three days after the bulk of the clan’s forces had left for Kirigakure no Sato, Kimimaro-chan had returned alone to demand his sister’s freedom. Under the angry, disbelieving eyes of the rest of the clan - old injured shinobi and the handful of non-combatants that had stayed behind - he freed her.

Afterwards, he scowled at the Kaguya from the safety of her arms, as they walked away.

* * *

**Bonus**

Obito broke out of the Iwa-kin’s genjutsu with burning red eyes, newly awakened Sharingan spinning slowly. The enemy had miscalculated trying to trap him into an illusion of his deepest desire.

 _Deepest desire?!_ Obito silently mocked, _A beloved who put him first in their heart... Who? One was DEAD and the other was probably even now tying explosives to the base of the bridge, too BUSY following Baka-kashi’s orders to bother with a rescue._

An ugly sneer twisted his face as he jumped on the closest of his abductors and wrenched his neck, deft hands stealing a kunai in time to parry a strike from the side. Two others suddenly charged forwards, seeming to want to capture rather than kill. Obito’s Sharingan tracked their movements, ducking and weaving under the strikes, parrying those he was still too slow to avoid.

Time held no meaning in the deadly dance. Bruises bloomed from close encounters with their earth walls and stone bullets but he made sure to pay each injury back in fire and steel. Everything hurt but Obito was determined to spill no secrets. _I’m no traitor! Even if you want a body to bargain with, I’ll only be leaving a corpse_ , he vowed to himself.

They seemed to have realized this too, because they stopped restraining their jutsu.

Boulders shook free from the cave’s ceiling and while Obito’s Sharingan tracked them, he knew his body was too tired to step back in time. A split-second decision had his fingers rushing though a series of seals before agonizing pain burst on his right side. Pinned under a rock, he still cast the jutsu, collapsing the cave around them, looking to bury the enemy here with himself.

* * *

 “And what happened afterwards?”

“What’s more to say? Kumo infiltrators set off a bomb in the capital and my Hotaru-chan… my Hotaru-chan…”

“They killed her.”

“Yes.”

“The shinobi world is sick, boy.”

“We’re working to stop the war, old man!”

“So naive. And what will there be left for you, when this war is stopped?”

“...There’s bound to be something. Rin…”

“Rin?”

“Ah… one of my teammates.”

“Just a teammate?”

“Leave it alone, old man!”

_“Ah… I see.”_

* * *

 “...And what happened afterwards?”

“What’s more to say? Kumo infiltrators set off a bomb in the capital and the girl died. Rin-chan thought I was upset so we talked and she helped me… helped me… Hotaru...”

_“...Not quite.”_

* * *

 “And? What happened afterwards?”

“What’s more to say? We came back to Konoha and Rin-chan helped me prepare for the chunin exams. Taijutsu isn’t her focus but Rin-chan’s pretty good with senbon, shuriken and thrown kunai. And she’d stay behind to heal me after each training session, too.”

“This Rin… who is she again?”

“Rin-chan’s my teammate.”

“Just a teammate?”

“Hehe… Leave it alone, old man!”

_“Just right…”_

“What?”

“Nothing, boy. Nothing for you to worry about.”

* * *

“Is you belly full yet? Is it all sloooowly going down-”

“Just let me eat in peace!” Obito grumbled. “I swear, if you start talking about poop while I’m trying to finish my food-”

“You said it, not me!”

“Dammit, Guruguru!” They called themselves Zetsu, old man Madara’s freaky white helpers. Obito didn’t know why the old man had saved his hide but he made sure to hide any misgivings under a lively attitude and a cheerful grin, only half-faked.

Truth be told, he’d been feeling pretty positive lately. The Iwa-nin who’d tried to abduct him were dead, he was alive and healing and soon to be on his way back to Konoha. He couldn’t wait to show Rin-chan his new Sharingan.

Now that he was stronger, Rin-chan should finally acknowledge his feelings!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The more things change, the more they stay the same.


	5. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not a medical authority or a health professional of any kind. However, I've researched the pseudo-medicine in this chapter to have it as close to real life as possible while still accounting for chakra, bloodline limits and other fantasy plot-devices already present in the series. :)

**Chapter 4**

Old hinges groaned and smoke surged like twisting dragons when Tsunade opened the izakaya doors, then sundered around her. Tap-tap-tap. The hollow din softened and subsided enough to hear the tapping of high heels on rough wood. As usual, the patrons' searching stares weighed her worth on whatever arbitrary scale they'd found at the bottom of their bottles.

She marched confidently towards an empty table, ignoring the grimy tang of human misery with the ease of old habit, sat on the cushion and slapped a wad of ryō just as the waitress scurried over.

“Imo shōchū. Neat.” she ordered “And leave the bottle.” When Shizune settled next to her, Tsunade let herself relax. Disapproval thrummed in her apprentice’s chakra, perfunctory like the words she’d long committed to memory: _‘Please eat something’._

“Please eat something with that, Tsunade-sama.”

She played her part in much the same manner “Don’t nag, Shizune. You know my ears are deaf till noon.”

“It’s two in the afternoon.”

“Look at that, time flied and I’m just now joining in the fun.”

“For a certain definition of fun.” Shizune quipped, looking round the room and sipping her tea. She'd gotten cheekier but was still young enough that crowds held a stimulating sort of appeal. Tsunade could even get her to bet on people’s professions, pasts and proclivities sometimes.

“Two children here to buy a bottle for the father at home.” her apprentice guessed. Tsunade spared the kids a look and frowned.

“No.” The drink dulled the dual evaluations running through her mind to an ignorable hum. The preteen brunette walked with a slight hunch. _Worry, wariness or a symptom,_ her mind catalogued, a shinobi and medic's alertness both appending the record. A fine sheen of sweat covered the girl’s furrowed brow as she scanned the room with poorly hidden urgency. _Fear, anxiety or a symptom._ Trailing behind her was an older teen, his steps slightly lagging, imperceptibly stiff. _Hesitation or a symptom._ His wan complexion only raised the odds of illness.

“Shinobi?” Shizune guessed again, interrupting the weighing of the scales, irrelevant any way. They weren’t a threat and Tsunade was in no mood to heal.

“Hmm…” A sip of shōchū, the burst of flavor burning down her throat. “Not quite… or not yet. I suppose they’ll let us know soon enough. Am I right, brats?”

“Senju Tsunade-sama?” the girl asked, bowing politely.

“Let's say that’s me.”

“We apologize for interrupting your leisure time, Senju-sama, but we'd hoped to have your advice on a medical issue. At your convenience, of course.” A silver-tongue sharpened enough to almost pass for charm. _Almost._

“Cut to the chase.”

Their eyes met for an instant, hazel to jet, both playing placid. “I'd like to hire you to cure my brother. The medics we’ve seen so far have been unable to help.”

 _Nothing new._ “Not interested.”

“We’re not looking for charity.” the girl insisted, undeterred. “We can pay up front.”

"No."

"Please, Tsunade-sama. Please. Name any price." she begged. Tsunade told herself she couldn't feel the bite of the girl’s badly disguised disappointment.

“Ten thousand!"

"...All right."

"Shizune, take the kids to the inn and see what the boy’s got.”

“Yes, Tsunade-sama.”

“Satisfied?”

Another bow. “Thank you so much for your time, Senju-sama.”

“Go get your brother healed and stop wasting it then!”

* * *

Those kids were back. Tsunade frowned at the door separating hers and Shizune’s room. She could hear her apprentice’s soft voice asking a series of questions. _Why didn’t she fix this yesterday?_

“Shizune!” she called out. Predictably, the girl quickly excused herself and came to see to her needs. “What are they still doing here?”

“I’m sorry, Tsunade-sama." her apprentice swiftly apologized, looking flustered. "I couldn’t isolate the underlying issue.”

“I know you’re a bleeding heart but how much time are you planning to waste on some whim?”

“It’s not really a whim, Tsunade-sama. They really did pay… All ten thousand ryo.”

 _They had that much money to waste?_ Tsunade thought uncharitably. _Sure didn’t look like it._ “Well? What’s got you stumped?”

"The boy has malignant growths similar to germ cell neoplasms in his chest, belly and lower back, with an abnormal and inconsistent reaction to chakra application." Shizune explained, pacing the room as she ordered her thoughts. "There's cell spreading comparable to normal stage IV GCT with malignant cells found in the lungs, liver and stomach, all held in check by a thin layer of osteoblasts… possibly related to his clan's kekkei genkai, the shikotsumyaku. There's also healthy cell degradation due to the growing, quasi-permanent layers of bone. Neither him nor his sister could tell me the particulars. He's a survivor of Kiri's late Kaguya clan… but he must have been about five when Kiri put them down."

Slipping on clean clothes at a leisurely pace, Tsunade worked her chakra to remove the effects of yesterday's binge. _A rare medical challenge. Might be worth taking a look…_

* * *

"Watch closely, Shizune." she ordered, placing her hands on the boy's belly and shaping three thin strings of medical chakra. Two drilled past the shikotsumyaku-bone layer, holding it open against involuntary regeneration. Meanwhile, the third swept across the targeted malignant cells. Her chakra forcefully induced cell death in about half of them while the others mutated and divided further. "Did you see?"

"Yes, Tsunade-sama."

"It's an interesting case, but I'd take more than a couple of surgeries and regular infusions of chakra to fully eradicate." she wiped her hands and turned to leave. "You have your diagnostic. Shizune will write a report for you. We're done here."

"You won't even attempt to cure it?" Outrage lurked, barely leashed, in the girl's voice.

"Look kid, this isn't something you fix in a day. With the boy's kekkei-genkai hindering access and providing an isolated medium for the mutated cells, it will take several months, maybe a year of bi-monthly sweeps to root them all out."

"I understand that becoming our medic would be a huge commitment, Senju-sama, but we're willing to negotiate. Please." she pleaded. Tsunade sneered and convinced herself that watching the brat beg for her brother wasn't just one more link in a surfeit shackling her to her regrets.

"Forget it! I'm not setting up roots and don't need some snotty tagalongs either!"

"Of course. I understand that and I couldn't possibly ask you to change your lifestyle for one patient but if you'd let us, we could meet up with you for the checkups" the girl then attempted to bargain "and pay both a consultation and a retainer fee."

"My eyesight must be failing me. You don't seem to be made of gold."

"No, but I could potentially provide you with a steady stream of cash, in spite of how I look."

There was a tired tilt to those young eyes but the words carried a cockiness that rubbed Tsunade wrong.

"Eighty thousand a month!" she barked, challenging the girl's conviction with a quoted value too high even for Tsunade's own, peerless medical prowess. "Twenty thousand more for the bi-monthy procedures."

The brat tilted her head, seeming to run some silent calculations.

"Oneesan…" Worry laced the boy's voice. "It's too much. We don't… You don't have to-"

"Nonsense, Kimi-kun!" the girl cut him off. "That's what family's for." She tapped her foot as she thought, thin lips tightly pursed. The silence stretched. Tsunade almost relented when the kid huffed, rubbed a hand across her eyes and voiced her agreement.

"We accept. Is it possible to start right away?" Slim fingers slipped into a large pocket of the dowdy duffle coat, proffering a couple of small scrolls. Tsunade tipped her head, motioning for Shizune to get it. Her apprentice efficiently unsealed the scrolls, spreading stacks of grey banknotes all across the lime green quilt.

"Retainer for the first month and today's consultation fee." the girl stated somberly, with the countenance of a person long used making compromises and concessions.

This stoic acceptance soothed much of her pique.

"The loan sharks are persistent enough." Tsunade goaded her "Am I gonna have a posse of police officers breathing down my neck if I use this?"

The brat's lips just twitched but her eyes lit up with the laugh she'd nipped in the bud. The boy on the other hand, looked offended.

"Of course not!"

"Settle down, Kimi-kun. This is all boring grownup banter. The money is clean, Senju-sama. The bounty station sees to these things."

Tsunade shrugged. In the end, it was the brat's business how she got the money. Tsunade figured she'd use most of it to settle some gambling debts and the rest to rack up some more.

* * *

Sunset spilled amber rays on the dull tatami mats by the time she finished the procedure. Tsunade pitied the boy for his illness and herself for agreeing to the arrangement. Her head hurt something fierce.

"When you're done setting things up with Shizune, get out. I don't wanna see you for two weeks and when I do, you’d best be as quick with the cash as before."

"It won't be a problem." the brunette insisted and bowed, preparing to leave. "Have a good evening, Senju-sama, Shizune-san. Come on, Kimi-kun. Let's treat you to some daifuku."

"Thank you, oneesan." he whispered, eyes red with unshed tears.

"Bah! What's all that for. I want to see a smile. It was a long, difficult procedure and you endured it bravely. I'm really proud of you."

Their voices faded in the distance and Tsunade grabbed her wallet. A sour taste lingered in her throat. In some dark, dingy pub there was a barstool with her name on it and a few bottles to blot the memories of Nawaki. That girl and her brother were a painful reminder of everything she lost, a crooked mirror down to the can-do attitude and the henged looks, though Tsunade couldn't decipher the reason she chose to look so young and didn't really give a damn.

* * *

**(recording 56978-february-99A.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

"Does this mean you're back to stealing, neesan?" Kimimaro whispered while nibbling on his ume daifuku.

Hotaru ruffled his hair and laughed. "It's nothing for you to worry about, Kimi-kun. The unfortunate truth is that there's a lot of greedy people out there. The bounty stations won't run dry any time soon."

"I want to help."

"Wait a while."

" _'Wait a while'_ " he mimicked, a whine slipping inside his frustrated tone. "You've been saying that since I was five, neesan."

"Enjoy being a kid, Kimi-kun. Let me take care of you for a while longer. Soon you'll be all grown up-"

"Hmph!"

"-and I'll expect you to take care of me in my old age, like a dutiful young man!"

"'Neesan, you're still ten!" he laughed.

"Bah! I've an old soul that's not getting any younger."

"Then let me help you."

"Wait till you're sixteen."

"You said fourteen two years ago."

"Kimi-kun… Bounties, theft… it's not my first choice of employment. It is however the best paying job that doesn't expect one to kill." Ten years had passed since their troubles in Mizu no Kuni but the memories lingered. Hotaru avoided pain like the plague but neither did she feel like hurting anyone else.

"Come on, Kimi-kun. Finish your sweets and let's see if your neesan still has the skills to finish a bounty before your next check-up with Senju-sama!"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurrah for time skips.  
> From this chapter onward please mind the tags! :)


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

**(recording 58011-june-037.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

Five months flew by, a montage of stressful bounty hunts between bi-monthly meetings with Senju Tsunade.

Hotaru got back into stealing and rarely got caught. Rarely wasn't never though, one of the main reasons why she didn't want Kimimaro-kun joining her for these 'item acquisition' missions, as the bounty station classed them. Kimi-kun's knowledge of chakra however, helped her develop new tricks for the job, handy but hazardous jutsu that were often as dangerous to the caster as to the target. _Look at me, pulling all the reckless stunts I never let my grand-kids pull…_ she mused ruefully.

The latest request Hotaru had picked up was an unfortunate one. She was to steal the seal of the only lord of Grass Country who was said to favor independent bounty hunters over Kusagakure shinobi.

A political rival was paying well to get the lord's seal before the Grass Daimyo met with the royal court. _Probably going to use it to discredit him_ , Hotaru thought, while she inspected the manor grounds. _But I don't want to know the particulars_.

Politics could be more cutthroat than shinobi business sometimes, and she needed the money if she was to make this month's payment to the Slug Sannin.

When the lord left the manor, she followed his plodding carriage to town, slipped in the throng of people and, when he turned down a narrower road, slyly struck a street cart. Produce flew across the way, hitting passersby and startling the horses. The crowds swelled in the commotion. Angry, the lord stepped down to scold the hapless street vendor and Hotaru carefully sidled closer. She found the seal on the second try and slipped it inside her pouch, marked with a chakra tag.

Almost before she could close her canvas bag, it vanished into the pocket of one of the man's guards, who then turned and winked at her. _Cheeky!_

Playing petulant, she stomped her feet then pretended to slip on the mass of mashed vegetables and bump into him.

"Ah, help!" she yelled,  hooking the seal with a chakra string as she fell. The string stuck to the tag, sliding out of his pocket.

The guard's arms caught her before she could hit the ground, warm but hard like iron shackles. _This young man..._ _Can't he cut me a break?_

"Careful that you don't hurt yourself." he advised, taking the seal back with smiling nonchalance. Her brows furrowed and she silently cursed. _You!... You!... threatening people with a smile…_ Hotaru grit her teeth, wrenched herself free and started running. It was risky, but she had to try it. She needed that thing.

Her fingers moved in a series of hand seals as she weaved through the crowd. On the last one, the tag on the lord's seal lit up and the object replaced itself with another marked stone she'd held in her pocket. Her whole hands burned from Kimi-kun's experimental jutsu, nerves rubbed raw, but she focused on running away as far and as fast as possible.

* * *

It only took a sliver of chakra to wrap himself in a genjutsu and follow. Obito easily kept pace with the girl cutting across vegetable fields and into the forest. Seeing the young brunette bat aside branches and ferns brought a strange feeling of deja-vu. _Perhaps some escort mission_ , he pondered. _During the war._ One where his team had stuck to walking... but none sprung to mind.

Breathing heavily, the girl powered through the underbrush, leaped over logs and slipped between shrubs at a pace too fast for a civilian - but it hadn't seemed to occur to her to tree hop.

Obito felt for the girl. She was giving it her all but it was pitifully little. _An academy dropout_ , he guessed. _Or a runaway from the genin corps._ In wartime, her thieving tricks would've earned her a spot in Intelligence and a swift deployment behind enemy lines. A death sentence. Too few chances in peacetime as well, if this was how kids got by.

He followed her to an abandoned cabin. Chest heaving with exertion, the girl trapped the door and windows then huddled in a corner to keep watch.

 _Did she sense something?_ His lips curled in a mean little smile. Leisurely, Obito sat on a branch to wait, watching her bright chakra bubble with unease.

Some time past midnight her chakra finally settled in sleep and he sneaked inside. Phasing through her traps, he rifled for the seal. She carried surprisingly few things, he thought, rolling the lord's seal across his fingers like a coin.

He sent it to Kamui this time, a far safer bet than the pocket from which she'd already pilfered it twice. The girl was persistent, Obito'd give her that.

Moonlight spilled from the open blinds and he took a moment to peer at the childish features, relaxed in sleep. Soft sighs sneaked from parted lips.

 _I wonder why she looks so familiar._ A lightly held kunai traced the path his gaze followed, from her arched brows to the faint dark circles around her eyes and to her chubby cheeks, close but not touching. _No one comes to mind._

Such a sick world, where children had to die. A gloved hand pressed tightly against her mouth and with a swift strike he slit her throat. Reality trembled when her eyes glazed over and Obito turned intangible right as the room blew up.

* * *

He jumped out of range of the explosion, eyes closed against the glare of the flames. For one moment they dragged against his technique like snake tongues, tasting and testing. A body flicker brought him to the base of an old oak, a good twenty meters from where he'd been standing. Phasing back, he seated himself on a root and tried to make sense of the situation.

Just as he'd settled down under a light genjutsu, a girl fell from a nearby tree and hit the grass with thump.

She was the spitting image of the kid he'd killed, with her long locks unbraided now and dressed in an ill-fitting shirt instead of the light linen coat from before.

 _Had the other been a clone?_ No. His Sharingan would’ve been able to tell. Besides, this one looked too scared for that, judging by how she scanned her surroundings, wide-eyed and panting, trembling hands clutching her neck.

He stepped closer, trusting the genjutsu to muffle his steps. _A resurrection jutsu of some sort,_ he mused. _But I gave her no time for any hand signs._

All but invisible, he stared at her face, a hair's breadth away from touching. Silent tears spilled down the girl's cheeks. _She's missing some scars_ , he idly noted. ... _those dark circles around her eyes are gone as well._

 _Could it be possible to copy it, if it really was a jutsu?_ _How many lives could such a technique save?_

Her harsh pants brushed his lips. Obito's eyes narrowed. _Why's she dressed differently?_ _And more importantly, why does she look so damn familiar?_

* * *

**(recording 58011-june-039.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

Hotaru stared at the devastated forest clearing where the cabin used to be.

_What happened?_

Her neck ached with a phantom pain, faint impressions of orange masks and red eyes quickly fading from mind.

Paranoia urged her onward, walking through the night and past noon the next day until, two towns over, Hotaru convinced herself to stop at a tea-house.

Swallowing her distaste, she brushed against the tired-looking woman who was leaving the establishment just as she stepped inside. _I’m sorry._

“Irasshaimase!” greeted the waiter and she forced a smile for the cheerful young man leading her to a free table. The pitiful amount of ryo she’d pick-pocketed paid for a single cup of genmaicha.

“If you don’t mind me asking, are you a ninja, young lady?” the waiter asked curiously while Hotaru nursed her cheap cup of tea. She shook her head in lieu of an answer.

“Well… I haven’t seen you round these parts before. Won’t your parents worry, if you wander around all by yourself?”

She swallowed a grimace. _Young people are so nosy these days._ “...My mother is busy looking at fabrics, mr waiter. I’ll be back at the store before she even notices I left.”

* * *

He watched the girl start stumbling an hour after she left. Her skin had paled and she seemed to have trouble breathing. Following close-by, Obito catalogued her symptoms and kept a watch for any signs of shinobi techniques, be they jutsu, seals or something else.

After some time, she dropped to her knees in the grass, clutching at her chest.

He found himself crouching next to her. When had he gotten close?

She was gasping and choking, pupils blown wide. He itched to touch her hair, brush the damp strands out of her face. Poor girl. _Will she outlive her death again? Won't she?_ His Rin hadn't. Neither did millions of others.

Obito felt somewhat conflicted. _Can something like this even help everyone? Or would it be used as an excuse to murder without restraint?_

The grass whistled when she fell forward; reality warped and burned. _The drawbacks are clear but still…_

By the road, another body came to be.

_Amazing._

Eyes closed and shivering, the girl curled on the ground with no thought to safety. A black-haired, newborn kitten.

_Dying looks painful, kitty-cat. You should get stronger._

He dropped the lord's seal by her feet before he left.

 

 


	7. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time on e.t.s: Hotaru tried to steal from the wrong person, Tobi was intrigued and while curiosity killed the cat, the kitty in this scenario was Hotaru. Revival's a miracle only the first time, after that it becomes a scientific curiosity. To test his hypothesis, Tobi killed Hotaru again. Turns out, death by poison is a horrible way to die. Pity might have temporarily stayed his hand afterwards. Pity or something else... why does that girl seem so damn familiar?
> 
> Now: Let's get into the characters' heads a bit more. :)

**Chapter 6**

 

**(recording 58075-july-A41.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

Hotaru pressed lightly on the tension wrench while moving the pick. It was an old-fashioned lock, the kind that boasted an impressive number of pins but little else. Her thoughts wandered while her fingers carefully tested the resistance of each spring.

There’d been an unexpected development during Kimi-kun’s last healing session. Some cells had reacted to Shizune-san’s medical chakra in an even more unusual way than they usually did. This, in turn, had given the medic a new treatment idea which the Slug Sannin had seconded with unexpected enthusiasm considering that Shizune-san was to keep Kimi-kun under observation for six weeks.

Being away from him for over a month was hard. Senju-sama’s graciousness didn’t extend to cutting fees. If anything, Hotaru had to pay extra for food and lodging. So she was back to wandering all over Fire Country doing wicked things.

_I’m tired of it. So darn tired._

Hotaru’s heart had squirmed through the gamut of human feeling: her skin had secretly burned with shame at taking what she hadn’t earnt, she’d cursed in anger at the unfairness of the world, she’d felt delight at being so good at it and then boredom doing the same thing over and over again.

Lately… Lately, she’d been afraid. This fear was like a vice around her throat whenever Hotaru let herself think about things in depth. Every month they needed a lot of money in little time but there was always a chance she could get caught. And she couldn’t afford to.

She muffled a rueful laugh. What a twisted life to lead, when dying was more convenient than being imprisoned. But Hotaru had a family to think about again. Her and Kimi-kun… they were an atypical family. Some days their relationship felt more like that of a parent and child despite the label of ‘big sister’. Oddly enough, the older he got the more Kimimaro acted like a son instead of a younger sibling. Maybe he wanted some degree of security, she mused. Or perhaps it was the way she’d raised him. She’d never been a sister before. Only a mother and grandmother.

And now her boy looked almost five years older than her and sometimes he’d act more spoiled than when he was actually five. She almost couldn't believe it. How a decade flew by. For her it was the old routine of waking up, working and taking care of the young 'uns.  But she’d forgotten how quickly children grew up.

These ten years... They'd been most of Kimi-kun’s life. She’d taught him sciences and language on the road. After they settled down, she'd taught him how to mend a shirt, bake sweets, repair a table and fix a pipe. To the best of her ability she’d helped him become self sufficient and now that he was almost a man, he'd be wanting his own family soon. _Though hopefully not Shizune-san,_ she thought with a wince. Shizune-san was a nice, reliable lady but Hotaru didn't want Senju Tsunade for an inlaw. Those puppy eyes he'd started making at the Slug Sannin's apprentice better stay just that. He'd been anxious when the medics had advanced the idea of staying with them for those six weeks of observation but Hotaru could also see the cautious hope and excitement lurking underneath.

She sighed.

Another child grown up and Hotaru would soon be left all by herself. Annoyed at the foolish train of thought, she rolled her eyes and huffed. Ridiculous! She was being ridiculous. Kimi-kun wasn't going anywhere. But clearly she was taking the six week separation badly. _I'm acting like a silly old goose,_ she scolded herself. _No wonder little Kaede-chan used to tease me so._

Loneliness was tough now that Hotaru knew she didn’t have to be alone. (That even with this bizarre, unaging body, she didn’t have to shun long-term attachments.) And yet here she was, miles away from home, alone and unable to go back until she raised enough money for that ludicrous fee both she and Senju-sama knew had been said to drive them off; said and never amended even after they’d become a fixture in the two medics’ lives.

Another reason she was opposed to Kimi-kun’s budding infatuation. She could never forget that theirs and the medics’ was a purely professional relationship. Not after the Sannin’s jibes when Hotaru had been a day late with the monthly fee following the mess she’d made of that last bounty.

 _Tch! That bounty, that_ **_darn_ ** _bounty._ Hotaru could tell herself that it’d been an honest mistake, that the client had lied about the mission difficulty - because clearly the man's bodyguard had had shinobi training - but in the end she’d messed up. And she could console herself with the thought that in the end - against all odds, after dying twice - she’d managed to turn the item in.

But that was when it all started: mishaps and misfortunes and these constant jitters.

When the safe door clicked open, Hotaru checked for any traps then started carefully packing away the valuables. This wasn't a bounty, this was plain burglary. She’d cased the house and was cleaning the family for some quick cash.

With her leg still injured from the nasty spill she took three days ago, this was the most she could do. Bounties were unpredictable of late. She needed to be in top form and the constant alertness was taking a toll on her health.

Hotaru cursed her current streak of bad luck. These days the whole world seemed out to get her. If there was a construction site to pass, steel beams were almost sure to fall, if there was a wooden bridge to cross, the planks were almost sure to snap. She dodged most of these disasters with just scrapes and bruises to show for it but Hotaru wondered if the iMind found it amusing to mess with this old lady even more than usual.

Was it just a trick of the mind? _Nonsense..._ But she didn't want to think about it. This was one subject she preferred to bury deep inside instead of worrying over.

It couldn't be a bug in the system or a glitch in the machine because Hotaru wasn't a simulation. She was the real deal. _Of course I’m the real one. It’s all real._ Thinking that the world wasn’t real meant considering the possibility that the people around her weren’t real people. And doing that would probably turn her into a human-shaped monster instead of just the wicked old witch who sneaked in during the night to steal mommy and daddy’s hard earned money.

...And this was another reason why having a family was a true blessing. It helped her focus on the tangible rather than the philosophical. And maybe when Kimi-kun decided he was all grown up and had to leave the nest, Hotaru’d find some kids to babysit or some old folk to nurse…

Stuck in this too young body, romantic affection didn't seem in the books for her.

* * *

Of course he wasn't stalking her, Obito told himself. Stalking implied stealth, hinted at hidden watchers and unseen threats.

They were openly sharing a meal, at one of the nicer restaurants in the city.

Yes, he was under a genjutsu, but it just hid his scars, lightened and lengthened his hair. So in fact, the kitten saw more than most of his allies and close associates. _And she doesn’t even know enough to be grateful._

Obito honestly didn't know what’d prompted him to do it. He'd been watching her at the bounty station - _still_ not stalking her because he'd been there on business - arguing with two thugs over some bounty. She’d gotten the scroll the others had wanted.

He didn't like the way they looked at her. The scarred one’s patronizing sneer was annoying. So what if she was a kid? She’d gotten a lot better these past few weeks. Obito was pleased. With a little accident here and a small problem there, her situational awareness and reflexes had improved by leaps and bounds. Anything more would’ve been counterproductive. He didn’t want to break the kitty-cat. ...For some reason. Thus, the sneer was annoying. But the dirty glint in the other’s eyes was worse. He’d remember _that one_.

So he’d cast that genjutsu and sauntered over.

“My apologies for interrupting but I couldn’t help but overhear…” He put on a show. Joked and laughed and released just enough killing intent to get them to leave his little curiosity alone.

It wasn't his fault she wanted to thank him with a meal. He didn't even hint at it. Why would he? Being a detached observer was more relaxing than being an engaged one. So what if it was easier to pick her brain this way? It was also time consuming and he was a busy man. A busy man who'd been suckered into eating a meal with a girl he'd killed twice.

 _Would she run, if I told her?_ he wondered. _Or try to kill me?_ He wouldn't die, of course, and even if she did, she’d probably be back.

He smiled and asked if she invited all dangerous men who acted nice to little girls out for meals. Obito silently hoped it wasn't a habit. He didn't want to have to break her off yet another bad habit. He was a busy man, he didn’t have time to bother teaching little girls how to survive this horrible world... so why was he doing it? _...And who could have possibly taught her such an illogical, unnatural way of using chakra?_

She looked shocked, then flustered.

“Of course not. ...You’re actually the first person to jump in to help. Any longer and I probably would have passed them the scroll.” she admitted “It’s a dog eat dog world, especially in the underworld.”

A strange idiom, but true enough.

“Why hunt bounties then?” Obito wondered aloud. She'd shrugged.

“For the basest reason.” she stated “Money. Isn’t the world built around money?”

It was. All countries governed by greedy men powerful enough to want to gobble up the world, ripping it to pieces in the process. Ripping the little people apart, his Rin ...and so many others.

The kitten spoke of greed. Money, she’d said. A common reason, easily believed. It probably would have worked if he hadn't been watching her these past weeks.

 _Liar_.

 _Why do you want me to dismiss you as the average greedy thug, eh?_ It made him want to dig into her head and peel out her thoughts. _Play a sinner for sympathy? For laughs?_ She didn't act like a kid fascinated with the idea of being a 'bad guy'. Did she have to pay for her relative immortality? For blowing to bits and having the bits glue back? Was it something else? _Haha. Never you mind, kitty-cat. I'll find out your secrets._

He pasted on a wider smile and pretended to believe.

* * *

**(recording 58076-july-0F1.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

Taking another bite of her shrimp while listening to Tobi-san talk, Hotaru mused that her tablemate was certainly an interesting character.

He was a handsome man with a silver tongue and an easy smile, boasting the kind of refined features that came from decades of 'good breeding' or a judicious application of genjutsu and considering her packaging looked decades younger than the contents, she had no room to judge if it was the latter.

Hotaru ate her food slowly as they chatted, surprised to feel more relaxed than she'd been in a long time. He said he was a businessman and she bet her last ryo he was a shinobi but, in the end, his business was his own so she pretended to believe him. He was an entertaining conversationalist and, before she knew it, they’d spent the better part of the afternoon talking, dragging a late lunch almost into dinner.

She apologised for holding him and he smiled that nice, engaging smile when he denied having any prior commitment. Hotaru liked to think they parted on good terms.

She found herself giggling.

Even if she never met the man again, for a few hours, she'd felt young again. How strange.

 


	8. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Every so often, when the kitten was picking or dropping off bounties and Obito didn't have Akatsuki business to attend to, they'd oh-so-coincidentally meet somewhere in town. 

He'd been satisfied with simply keeping an eye on the girl but now that they'd met in person, he suddenly felt that having a bit of diversity didn't hurt anyone. 

Oh, he still arranged training challenges now and then: rigged the road she was travelling on with traps, repurposed some hungry wildlife for an impromptu race through the forest, placed bandits under genjutsu then dropped them by Kamui into her camp at night. 

Just little things, to keep her on her toes and keep her reflexes sharp. 

Her reactions were fun at first but Obito was starting to think the kitten had a very serious fear of pain. Hmm...somewhat to be expected if not even death could save her from it. Still, exposure therapy seemed to be working so far and face-to-face meetings were perfect opportunities for gauging her subsequent state of mind. 

Hence, Obito would appear, in this town or that, a travelling businessman who just happened to have some time to spare for catching up with an acquaintance. A tiny indulgence. 

And after long hours in meetings with Pain or babysitting the Akatsuki's clients, it did feel like an indulgence. Not necessarily because of her (or Obito's self-appointed task of monitoring her health, progress and life in general) but for how normal it made him feel, just mingling with civilians.

The Eye of the Moon plan was the mission of a lifetime: long and arduous, full of sacrifices and setbacks. But whether browsing forbidden scrolls in Ame's secret archives or watching Zetsu cannibalize some incompetent minion in the caves under the Mountains’ Graveyard, Obito just needed a break from it all sometimes.

So Tobi took the kitty-cat out for tea and cake, talked about music and movies and other civilian pastimes. 

And draped over a bamboo lawn chair with a glass of something sweet and suitably non-alcoholic, Obito earnestly tried to remember how to be genial and ...harmless… because his younger self was dead and Tobi was meant to be a persona not a person. 

She made him want to relax and if he relaxed with a mask on, even if it was one of his own making, it felt like he was no one - a shell for Madara and his legacy. What he signed up for. What his mission required and what he was more than willing to give. 

But sometimes... he wanted to be a person with the kitten - the kitten… _'Please call me －, Tobi-san.'_ she frequently pleaded (with a bemused smile at his refusal to use her name) but for some reason it always slipped his mind. It was probably a foreign name of some kind. Hard to pronounce, harder to recall. 

He'd much rather call her kitten anyway, with her button nose and large limpid eyes - and the stupid, trustful acceptance of a newborn kit (acceptance which made his heart hurt, like he was proud she could relax around him; an idiotic thought.) She should have figured out that he was a shinobi by now, and a missing nin, and been doubly wary for the deception. 

Obito supposed he could show her the wisdom of staying vigilant but the sun was peeking through the clouds, gilding the short grasses and making it seem like his kitten was a lost little fairy frolicking on a golden carpet, so he merely lounged under the garden umbrella ...and watched. 

He watched her share a bag of breadcrumbs between the fish and fowl on the lake and planned more 'training' for when she got back to work; he watched the civilians’ considering gazes trying to decide if he was a guard or a relative (or something more appalling) when Obito set his hand between her shoulder blades to urge her back to their table because it was half-past seven already and he had a meeting with Shimura at ten.

“Any more and the fish will float while the fowl sink…” he joked, crouching next to her. She felt warm under his hand, the light linen soft and yielding. “And worse, our ice cream will melt. Come back to the table.” 

But maybe he was imagining his own terrible thoughts on other peoples faces. What did he know of friendship? Oh, he'd had his dreams - delusions - when he'd been young, carried that flickering flame close to his heart: cousins, neighbors, teammates. The dreams didn't fade with morning light but they faded all the same: distant, disdainful clan mates, a lightning fast shinobi teacher who was _late_ whenever it mattered and a trusted teammate who'd murdered the love of his life.

Obito knew his heart beat on a different rhythm than other people. If his heart settled on something, he couldn't just 'let go'.

“You've ordered already?” she asked, patting her dress in a half-hearted manner. Torn blades still hung on the hem like green gobies in a sandstone sea. He swallowed the urge to brush them away and settled for placing a hand back on her shoulder.

“The waiter was getting twitchy. He’d already come by three times.”

“Nonsense! ...Three times, really?”

“Aha. That little bag of yours must be bottomless.” 

“I’m so sorry, Tobi-san!” she wrung her hands, appearing genuinely afraid she'd inconvenienced him. “...I asked you to go ahead and promised I’ll only be a minute… Tch.”

“It’s fine. You did tell me you'd come to feed them.” he waved off her apology. 

He felt somewhat surprised that it _was_ fine.

She’d kept to her goals - a quality he could appreciate -, stayed within sight (a detail that shouldn’t matter, yet very much did.) and mindful of his feelings, readily apologized. 

When much younger, Obito used to think his strong feelings were just another thing that set him apart from real Uchiha. But now he wondered. Even before he'd awakened his Sharingan, he could remember every smile, every hug, every word of encouragement. Likewise he remembered all the sneers and slights. 

Afterwards, the Sharingan branded the memories in the flesh. (A part of him still yearned for what he'd once shared with Kakashi and Minato but that tiny part drowned and rotted in a sea of loathing.) 

Obito knew he _felt_ with everything he was: curiosity, excitement, love, rage, hate or disdain. Lower intensities were painted on top to give the feelings the right tint, the nuance everyone else expected to see.

“Well, yes. It’s just a little hobby I picked up.” she explained “Something to do, when I have some free time and whenever the weather holds. So many folks do it that I try to restrain myself to coming only once a week. As you said, we wouldn't want to fatten them up too much. Still, I should've left it for later. My apologies.”

“No harm done. You found me sitting by the lakeside precisely because I myself had some time to spare. Now, what do you think of the ice cream? I didn't know what you'd like” he said, trying to look suitably solemn “so I used the tried and tested... eeny-meeny-miny-moe.”

And here he was, in his twenties, sharing ice cream with some little girl like they were _friends_. Because friendship was a nice, tame, socially acceptable relationship; because having her around felt good; because she was kind and laughed at his jokes and worried over his feelings and even if she died ( _and even though he'd killed her_ ), she’d always come back to him. Maybe that was friendship. 

Under the genjutsu, his Sharingan memorized the way she looked in her burnt orange dress, twin braids tied with big, floppy bows and the way she sat in that wicker chair, tasting her ice cream and smiling.

 _This is why people should be protected_ , his heart whispered. _Why his work is so important_ , his mind agreed. Why he was on the side of everything good and just, even if the path taking him there was as bloody as any other shinobi's. She made him smile too, this odd girl in her dowdy dress and old fashioned hairstyle. How old was she anyway? Dying clearly didn't remove her memories. Obito stopped to consider this. She looked young but rarely bothered acting as such. How long had she been young for? ...Could his undying kitten be older than him?

 

* * *

 

**(recording 62956-august-B40.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

“Oh, blackberry! One of my favorites.” she exclaimed, eyes lighting up at the sweet taste. 

“Haha, what a lucky guess!”

“Hmph. Mind sharing some of that luck, Tobi-san?” Hotaru asked. “I’d pay through the nose...”

His eyes seemed to twinkle. Resting his chin in his hand, Tobi-san slowly smiled. 

“Maa-maa. Do you feel unlucky, kitten?”

“Hmmm…” Turning a deaf ear to that dratted pet name, Hotaru earnestly considered her answer. “How to put it… there was this story where I... grew up.” she said, recalling one of Yuki-kun's most acclaimed roles “about a kid who lived in a half burnt village at the foot of the tallest mountain in the land. The boy couldn't use chakra… If fact, people thought it a myth. Only celestials could harness the power of the elements and to become a celestial, one had to walk through the wilds, ten thousand steps to the top of the mountain, high above the clouds where icy squalls and waist-high snow lasted well into summer, and petition the monks for admittance into their noble sect. 

The boy must have been both the luckiest and unluckiest kid in the world. Whenever he left the safety of the village, something would happen.

Hail would fall in mid summer, hungry wolves would prowl by the gates, bandits would attack or travelers would come, sick with the plague.

For six years he'd try his best to leave and the universe would conspire to hold him in. Just hold him. A hail so strong as to split trees in half and he'd somehow find a fox burrow to crawl into till it passed. Wolves would bite his foot in three places and though he'd almost bleed out before being found, the wound would be patched in time and wouldn't get infected. One in five villagers would die from the plague and although he'd be the one to suffer the longest, he'd also fully recover. The unluckiest and also luckiest kid in the world.” She sighed, dropping her spoon into the empty bowl. 

“Sometimes, Tobi-san, I feel just like that kid.”

“Does he at least make it to the top of the mountain?”

They were just filming the fourth installment when she had the procedure. What was going on back home? She bit her lip. Her Yuki-kun… Had he finished the movie? …How old _was_ her son by now? Older than her? Was there a Hotaru there with her son and grand-kids?

“I don't know, Tobi-san. I never read the ending. I hope he does… someday.”

 

**(warning: environment destabilised 4.33% in proximity to primary entity)**


	9. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loved writing this chapter and I hope it’ll be an enjoyable read. Please mind the tags!

**Chapter 8**

 

 **(recording 800311-october-034.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered** **fragments)**

Shizune-san’s experimental procedure worked like a charm. In a matter of months, Kimimaro's diseased cells were all but eradicated.

For Hotaru, that meant fewer trips to whatever town the medics were visiting, fewer bills, fewer bounties and more time to spend with her nearest and dearest. And how lovely I’d be, if her friends and loved ones cooperated and stopped watching each other like hawks.

After their first few outings with Tobi-san, the man became as elusive as a shadow. Be it tea, dinner or a movie, her friend was nowhere to be found… unless Kimimaro wasn’t there; and while Kimi-kun was too well behaved for a tantrum, his sulking made his own opinion loud and clear.

She wanted to ask why they’d begun avoiding each other but seeing that unspoken dislike work both ways, Hotaru delayed confronting the issue.

* * *

  **(recording 804901-october-112.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

They were in the middle of a very important game of uta-garuta when Tobi-san stopped and went stiff. His eyes narrowed in displeasure and seemed to be boring holes into something behind her. 

When Hotaru turned to look, there was nothing there. Or if there was, it was well concealed. She shivered. Everything about the situation was making her uncomfortable… Both the idea that something was lurking around (where before, Tobi-san’s presence had seemed to ward off the worst of her bad luck) and that Tobi-san could see it. _And clearly knows who or what it is._

Before Hotaru could make up her mind to speak, Tobi-san got up, made a small, aborted movement to pat her head and then left the room without a word.

* * *

“ **_So this is where you’ve been wasting time._ **” Zetsu’s black half accused, with his better half cheerily asking “Who was she? She’s not one of ours. Why is she so small? Who is she, Tobi?” 

“Some kid… And you can hardly call it ‘wasting time’ when we are well ahead of schedule, for the most part due to my own work.” he bit back.

“ **_You’re rarely in Ame these days._ ** We miss you.”

He shrugged.

“Pain doesn’t need me breathing down his neck.” he remarked. 

“ **_So you’ve been here all along._ **All this time! Are little kids fun? Are you having fun?”

Zetsu’s accusations were getting tiresome but admitting the truth somehow seemed like admitting a fault. Obito was loyal and hardworking, what more did the clone want? Zetsu had never micromanaged him like this before. Was he to give up anything and everything that made him happy?

“ **_Distracting you won’t be healthy for the kid._ **”

His heartbeat picked up. 

“No need for threats, Zetsu.” he hissed, rewarding his nosy ally with a thin smile full of killing intent.

“Of course! Let’s hope **_they’re unnecessary._ **”

* * *

**(warning: environment destabilized 88.66% in proximity to primary entity)**

He left the meeting on a whim, not even a hunch; stopped Pain with a raised hand and a vague _'we'll settle the rest of it some other time'_. Kamui brought him to the elm he'd taken to haunting, a thick branch right outside the wide window of his kitten's inn room. 

The quiet hit him first. At this time of day, the inn was far too quiet. _Zetsu._

He was peripherally aware of the branch splintering in his hands, teeth grit and stomach clenched to the point of pain. The whole garden reeked of blood. _Zetsu._  

The smart thing would've been to let her die. To let Zetsu explode or get him out of there before he could figure out that she came back to life. Could she even come back if Zetsu… if he...

It didn't stay silent for long. Her screams came next. Harsh, heartrending.

It was a stupid, instinctive thing to teleport and become tangible just long enough to drag one of them away. 

In that brief moment between becoming solid and teleporting, that instant of weakness, Hotaru died. 

The world shuddered and his arm and shoulder, outstretched, burned. He phased as soon as he could. Distantly, through the excruciating pain, he could feel the implanted cells shaping themselves into new organs and tissues, struggling to keep him alive. 

Beyond that, thoughts, feelings, memories burst like a dam, all too chaotic for logic aside from one: _Madara. Zetsu. They tried to change me_ . _They. Tried. To. Change. Me._

With newly grown limbs he grabbed the black and white lumps that were left of Madara's crony, shunted them into Kamui and followed them inside.

* * *

  **(recording 811375-october-0FE.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

The air was still. Even dust motes seemed to hang suspended in the sun shafts, like time had slipped away for its lunch break when no one was looking. 

Hotaru blinked slowly once, twice, then started laughing. 

 _Why is the world so determined to break around me? I'm too old for this... Half-albino half-black mutant cannibals! Honestly!_ Her laugh was sharper now, with a manic edge. Curled against her chest, her arm still throbbed with pain and the shadow imprint of sharp teeth. 

_Even Sōichirō-kun's gory computer games made more sense than this._

That _thing_ had started gnawing on her arm as soon as his Poison Ivy / Zerg parasite had paralyzed her body (from the neck down, apparently bi-colored plant androids liked it when their prey screamed.) With the ease of long practice it had twisted her arm in its socket, the better to grasp it from where he sat on her chest. Sharp teeth tore through flesh, bit and pulled the tendons taut. They snapped.

And screamed she did, louder and longer than Hotaru could ever remember screaming when, out of nowhere, an orange Tuxedo Mask wannabe had lunged towards them, either to kill the mutant or silence her infernal screaming. 

She remembered hardly anything after that, shorts bursts of color and sound as the poison slowed her heart and lungs. A breath... another, slower... then one last.

Now, both freaks were missing and this mad, mad world had gone silent and still. 

“I don't know, gentlemen…” she said, slurring her words as her tongue gradually grasped that it wasn't paralyzed anymore. Everything felt perfectly healthy and, at the same time, just barely wrong. The air smelled of ash and heat, both trapped in this moment like flies in amber. 

She took a deep breath, felt it coat her throat and settle in her lungs like a plague. Ticking at its own pace, her arm still throbbed in time with her heart. She breathed out.

“...I've tried bargaining. Pleading too. I would've answered all your surveys and had my family advertise your garbage gadgets. But your world… ha-ha! Your world is _monstrous_ ! And it's turning everyone in it into monsters too. When I get out… ha-ha! I don't think I'm quite _there_ yet… but…”

“You won't... _Hotaru_. I'll make sure of it.” said a voice.

Between one thought and the next, a man sat on the rubble and rubbish of the dirty alley, looking for all the world like he'd always been there. 

He was a tall, creepy fellow, covered in blood and black ichor. Disturbingly, he could have passed for Tobi-san's twin, if Tobi-san was a red-eyed brunette with terrible scars down the side of his face and had recently been crying bloody tears. 

He looked half-mad, half-dead and wholly focused on her.

“You- You here to kill me?”

“No! Never again. I promise. I swear, never again.” he fervently vowed, voice breaking on every second word. Wide eyed and trembling, he kneeled next to her and manhandled her into a terribly tight hug. She felt small. Small and trapped... but oddly unthreatened. Still, she decided she wasn't touching that _'again'_ with a ten foot pole. Instead, from the firm hold of his arms, Hotaru tried to soothe the maniac.

“It's ok, it's alright. You're safe.”

This just made him cling tighter until her bones were grinding painfully.

“I- I'm safe too.” she half wheezed, half whispered. “See, I'm safe.” These magic words seemed to settle some of his fears.

“Yes, yes you are. He won't hurt you again. Won't be hurting anyone again.” He hissed it like a promise, viciously self-satisfied. She supposed a better person might have balked but...

“That's good. You did a good thing.” she praised instead “You put down a very dangerous... _creature_.”

He started laughing then, drawing back a bit to look at her face. Arcane symbols spun inside those red irises, alien and mesmerizing. His stare could've felt frightening, if it wasn't overflowing with affection.

“Yes, he was. Far more dangerous than I'd thought him…” he confessed. “You seem to figure out everyone's danger level just fine. Everyone's but mine.”

“We know each other.” She didn't phrase like a question but the man seemed to wilt all the same. His shoulders sagged and he grumbled to himself.

“They're just scars. Do I really look so different?”

Hotaru had a hunch but was still struggling to reconcile the image of her buddy the 'businessman' (a bit of an oddball but funny, friendly, mild-mannered nonetheless) with… this.

“Tobi-san?” she ventured.

He nodded.

“If you'd like. Obito, actually.”

It was her turn to draw back, gaping. _No… Surely not the little sunshine._ She scanned his features for anything familiar. She supposed it could be possible.

“ _Uchiha_ Obito?”

“You… remember me?” he asked, voice choked with some strong emotion she couldn't quite pin down.

“Of course. I like to think that, in spite of all those shinobi rules and regulations, once upon a time, we used to be friends.”

“Yes! YES!” he pulled her back into his arms. Huffing, Hotaru wriggled until she could peer upwards. He sounded certain but he didn't look particularly content. His bloodstained face lacked any trace of a smile and his eyes had a dark, unsettling gleam. She shivered and looked away. 

“Yes. We were. l-” Calmer, he rested his forehead on her shoulder, breathing deeply. “They tried to take it away… but we were friends, Hotaru. _**Hotaru**_..."

"Yes?"

Again, his grip tightened to the point of pain. "Until you went and _died_.”

“Mmhmm...I do have that unfortunate habit.” Hotaru sheepishly admitted, then sobered up. “I'm sorry, Obito, if the news hurt.” 

He stayed silent, a warm weight against her shoulder.

“...Dare I ask why an old friend has been masquerading as a new friend for the past few months?”

He mumbled into her neck something she couldn't quite make out, something about memories, compulsions and killing people. Hotaru wasn't sure she wanted to know. She fidgeted until he started to relax the steel trap he called a hug. 

Circumstances aside, this young man had only gotten clingier with age. _Tobi-san is Obito. What happened to that happy little boy?_ Hesitantly, she lifted a hand to touch Obito’s scars. Words felt unnecessary. The thick, ropy mass was by itself a testament to the hidden horrors of shinobi life.   

Obito kept quiet as well, simply stared at her with those eerie red eyes.

At length, she pulled him back into a hug, cradling his head to hers.

“What happens now that I've seen under your genjutsu?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“So we just go on as before?”

“With more knowledge… and fewer obstacles.”

She smiled against his cheek. “Can you visit me more often mister 'businessman'?”

Obito laughed - short, sharp and rueful. “My... business will probably dissolve. I for one, plan on  quitting the board of directors.”

“Eh, so high up, were you?” _What sort of shinobi or missing nin was he?_

“I suppose. Nepotism, in its most ridiculous form.”

“Do you need a place to crash while you figure out a new job?”

“Your… brother hates me.”

“Kimi-kun's not the best judge of character.” she complained, thinking about his deepening friendship with the two medics. “I’ve known you since you were a boy. You're a perfectly nice young man.”

He huffed something that should’ve been a laugh yet sounded more like a sob.

“I’ll prove you right.” he quietly promised.

“Of course you will. Didn’t doubt it for a moment.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3


	10. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I merged the last two chapters because I think cliffhangers are the work of the devil. I hope you enjoy this last roller-coaster ride. :)

**Chapter 9**

**(recording 892090-february-9FF.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

Somewhere between the Kurama clan's attempted sabotage of the Treaty of Ashina on the 5th of May 511 c.e. and the actual signing on the 6th, the sound of a door opening distantly registered. 

By the faint clinking, Obito must've maneuvered around the piles of scrolls and found some free spot for both their cups. The Kurama hadn't made much progress or rather Hotaru hadn't managed to finish the paragraph before Obito draped himself over the back of her chair, resting his chin on her shoulder to see what she was reading. 

Going by his disdainful _'hnn'_ , he wasn't impressed. It was one of the more comprehensive history books he'd brought her but, to be fair, it was a dry read and too censored by clan politics to be of much use. Hotaru was a bit too frustrated to ‘be fair’. She shrugged her shoulders to dislodge him.

Obito sighed, ignored her efforts and started playing with a lock that had escaped her braids, twisting it around his fingers.

“You won't find your answer there.” 

“I won’t know if i don't look.” she retorted, trying to refocus on what she was reading. _Heavens, the author’s long-winded!_ She’d tried to scan the volume before beginning but these early chroniclers had never heard of a table of contents, let alone headers and chapter titles.

“You’re better served helping me sort the diagnostic jutsu scrolls. The results we got from analyzing your chakra were interesting.” Obito mentioned offhand, still tugging gently at her hair. 

It felt nice. And while Hotaru usually closed her eyes and appreciated these little signs of affection, she was too frustrated today.

“I think developing a jutsu or a seal is the way to go.” he continued “Hunter nin have tracking jutsu which can be set to monitor one particular chakra signature and sealing to prevent regeneration. Not that yours is actual regeneration. Taking into account the space-time displacement, reappearan－”

“I want to eliminate all other avenues before we make me into a guinea pig.” Hotaru firmly interrupted him.

“A... guinea.. pig?” he slowly sounded out the words, as though unsure if he'd heard her right. “Guinea?”

“A test subject, lab rat.” she testily explained.

He stiffened, offended. “You’re not a test subject. But you can't keep living like this, Hotaru.” his voice sounded strained.

 _What does he know?_ She threw the book on the table, face down. The pages creased and crumpled and she didn’t give a tinker’s damn. _I can’t even act like a crusty old lady unless I want to be labeled a bad-tempered brat... ‘Can’t keep living like this.’_ she silently mocked. As though Hotaru wanted to be stuck as a kid while her family and friends grew old around her.

Slowly, Obito’s arms came around her in a hug.

“Hotaru.”

She kept silent, fury and frustration churning in her gut.

“Hotaru-chan, we’ll find a solution.” he promised. 

“I’ve kept an ear out for years! No one’s gone though anything similar… Or if they did, one of your shinobi villages must’ve snapped them up” she sneered “whether to replicate the jutsu or try to breed their ability like a new kekkei genkai.”

“If that's the case I’ll try to see if any of my old contacts know something. You can’t be the only person in the world to have gone through this.” he pointed out “We just need to find the rest.”

Her shoulders sagged and all the ire leached out of her. 

“Obito-kun...”

His temple pressed against her cheek.

She’d considered and reconsidered telling him about the iMind plenty of times but something always stopped her. _I don’t want him to think me crazy_ , she told herself. _And besides, we’re barely dealing with his own bag of issues._  

He was a dear friend but the fact that Hotaru suffered (enjoyed) his possessiveness didn’t make her blind to it. Obito’s clinginess had a tendency of spiraling into something nasty if he thought anyone was looking at her the wrong way and even when he ostensibly left the house she had a feeling he often came back to make sure she was safe.

What's more, Hotaru didn't need the possible panic attacks if Obito actually believed she came from a different world or that she wasn’t real. He was getting better but that could change if he thought Hotaru might leave at any moment. 

However, the truth about the iMind aside, Hotaru trusted him. After all, she let him play with her chakra in spite of the deep revulsion she felt for scientists and doctors since this whole mind mapping, neural network transfer fiasco. (She hoped that if something went wrong, Obito could use that chakra he stored and experimented with to put her back together again or somehow help her sort herself out.) 

And truth be told, she found it hard not to depend on him when he exerted himself to be helpful and it seemed to make him so happy. She liked having someone to rely on. 

For all that she’d learnt to be the pillar of the family, she missed the days when she had a pillar of her own.

 _This man…_ She turned to press a kiss to his temple. 

“Hnn…” he grunted ever so eloquently, inching closer and giving her a little nudge. Laughing, she kissed him again and again, until he stopped the tiny nudges asking for more. 

...If she wasn't misinterpreting Obito and what he felt towards her, he too wanted them to be something more than friends.

* * *

**(recording 899859-march-000.mm // backup partially corrupted // displaying recovered fragments)**

They were fighting over the seal again.

“Honestly, Obito-kun!” she shouted, waving the loosely bound stack of papers he’d handed her. It had all the information he’d compiled, along with his own, dodgy theories. “This isn’t research! This is you speculating on the nature of time and space and hoping to slap some tacky tattoo on me and call it a day. I’ve had it with mad scientists trying to sell me their third-rate, untested shit!”

“Hotaru! You swore…” Obito looked as if he didn’t know whether to laugh of stay angry. “And ...are you seriously calling me a mad scientist?” 

It banked some of her fire. _Of course it’s not you. ...You’re doing your best with faulty information._

“Figure of speech...” she grumbled.

He usually let it go. This time, he didn’t.

“No. Whenever we get close to some actual solution, you dismiss it.” he complained, “There’s always some reason for you to reject it out of hand. It’s always something! I know you’re scared. Everything you’ve told me about this renewal/rebirth process is wigging me out.” he confessed, crouching in front of her chair. 

He took a hold of her hands, looking painfully earnest. 

“And I keep asking myself, what if we make things worse? But we’ve worked so hard… You know I’ve already prepared the array. And you know the matching seal simply records chakra fluctuations and your body’s condition when they occur. It’s our best hope to finding a pattern, some explanation as to why your body seems to be in stasis.”

She kept quiet.

How could she tell him that he was trying to find reason in a universe that didn’t make sense?

...That maybe the  Hotaru he saw was simply a simulation, some thousand lines of code or that maybe he was. 

“Please, Hotaru. ...Just, try it. Please.” his thumbs drew gentle swirls on her wrists, writing her name in time with her heartbeat.

She hated everything about this situation but, more than that, she hated hearing him beg.

“Alright.”

His eyes lit up. 

“Thank you.”

His fingers sped through a series of seals, before he set his palm on her outstretched hand. “Fuin.”

 

**(warning: environment destabilised 99.99% in proximity to primary entity)**

**(primary entity successfully located)**

**(retrieving)**

 

The room vanished. She woke up.

* * *

**~O~**

* * *

She woke up in a comfortable single bed, buried under the sort of soft blankets she hadn’t been able to afford in decades. An art nouveau portrait hung on the opposite wall, smiling at her serenely. 

She blinked and yawned, bringing a tiny hand to hide her open mouth.

“Welcome back, mrs Kita. How are you feeling?” asked one of the three doctors waiting by the foot of the bed.

Hotaru couldn’t answer. She couldn’t even look at them. _What sort of fresh hell is this?_

“There’s been a small mishap so we’ve fitted you with a younger model. There were some issues with the version you ordered. Ahem. Some psychosensory rejection... That's to say, your mind perceived you as being significantly younger than we expecte- Well, for some reason you’ve very young at heart, ha-ha.” one tried to joke.

“But not to worry, you can stop, start or even reverse the aging process as with the original product and being in the 0-15 year range, the pain damping is set even higher.”

She blinked. Something was bothering her about what he said, but she couldn’t focus enough to ask. Everything the doctor was saying sounded very interesting and terribly important. At the same time, it passed her ears like white noise. 

“Mrs Kita?” they tried again to get her attention. “Mrs Kita?”

She stared at her hands, the same hands she’d seen today and the day before… Obito was only just holding them… A sob caught in her throat. _What Obito? Some figment of my imagination!_

“Ahem. We’ll let you get your bearings, ma’am.” the younger doctor hesitantly offered “And your family’s been waiting to see you.”

 _Kimimaro-kun? No,_ she reminded herself. _There is no Kimimaro..._ Only her son, Yukihiro, and her grandkids, Sōichirō and Kaede. Hideyuki was dead and Obito didn’t exist.

Seeing that she had no intention of talking to them, the doctors beat a hasty retreat, leaving her alone with a tech and his whirring machines. 

She watched the short, skinny man type, fiddle with dials and look at some readings. Hotaru wondered why he was still here.

“...What mishap were the doctors talking about?” she finally asked, having figured out what was bothering her.

“What?” the man jumped, seemingly having forgotten she was even in the room.

“The doctors. They said there was a ‘small mishap’.”

“Oh, that. Well… Err…” he dithered over giving an answer “We lost track of your consciousness. It’s a known error and we always recover from it.”

“...So how many years did it take you to find me?”

“Years?” he looked confused “We recalibrated the sensors, adjusted the search area and had you back in a couple of seconds.”

 _Impossible!_ “What sort of powers are you people playing with?!” she exclaimed “I thought I lived entire lifetimes in another world...”

The young man had the gall to laugh.

“The iMind can’t create worlds, ma'am. It’s just as advertised: we move your soul to a newer, better you.”

“I’d figured out that was just propaganda.” she countered, getting angry “Are you seriously saying that my own mind imagined everything that happened for the past I don’t know how many years? That I killed myself and then willed myself alive and that everything was just some sort of sick dream?”

He finally had the decency to look worried. 

“I could get a company rep to answer your questions…”

“I don’t want some whitewashed version! I want you to tell me what happened to me!” she begged. 

Hesitantly, the man came to sit by her side. He watched her for a moment, then lifted a hand to wipe away the tears. Was she crying? 

“How long were you there for?…” 

“Decades…” she whispered. His eyes looked sympathetic, but more than that, they looked guilty. “You know something.”

A look of fear passed across his face. She quickly grasped his lab coat, dragging him closer. 

“Tell me.” she ordered and while he tried to draw back without hurting her, Hotaru was not about to let the opportunity pass. “Tell me, please!” 

Finally, he relented.

“Look lady… I’m only saying this ‘cause you seem to be taking it hard. It’s a company secret so you best keep quiet about it.” he warned her “Moving consciousnesses isn't as simple as just removing them from one place and placing them in another. You're basically grabbing something from an undefined but pretty well determined dimension - ours - and piercing space-time to place it, hopefully, in the same dimension, only moments later, in a different body. Sometimes things get lost along the way. It used to happen a lot in the early days of animal testing. Their minds, souls, what-have-you just ended in some different place. Whether another dimension or another location in this one, it’s hard to tell.” He stopped for a moment, then added under his breath, “Whatever happened to you, you should be happy you didn't end up on a star or in the vacuum of space.”

“Happy?” she whispered, a hiss of breath away from silence. This time she couldn’t hold back the sobs. “Do you know how many times I died?”

She closed her eyes and cried. At length, she felt his skinny arms wrapping around her. 

“Shh… Souls are resilient.” he tried comforting “We wouldn’t even think of moving them otherwise… And now you’re back safe and sound. Just try to enjoy－”

“Enjoy what? came a biting question.

Her eyes flew open. 

A haggard and twitchy looking Obito was boring holes into the technician holding her on the bed. The image couldn’t have been helped by her tear-streaked face and the way the man quickly jumped back, looking both guilty and vaguely alarmed.

“Where did you come from?” the young tech demanded in a shaking voice.

“What precisely is she supposed to be enjoying?" he hissed, ignoring the question. Obito's vicious tone almost dared the man to give the wrong answer.

"...You can't just disappear like that, Hotaru.” he then calmly added, turning to look at her.

The words were softly spoken but she could see the whites of his red eyes (and the parody of a smile that said he was trying but that his composure was hanging by a thread).

“I was…” he appeared to be trying to pick some emotion that seemed innocuous enough. “...scared.”

“Look, dude” the technician interrupted, “this is a private room."

"Is it?"

"If you're not family, I’m going to have to ask you to leave before I call security.”

“Not. Family!?” the smile stretched but his words were spat with venom and Obito's fixed gaze gave the impression of barely leashed violence.

“...Obito.” Hotaru finally found her voice. _He’s here! How is he here?_ That second thought she quickly dismissed as unimportant. _He’s here!_ "Obito."

“Yes, we’re not a family yet, are we…” he mused. “We should fix that.”

A couple of swift strides brought him near the bed. Shouldering the young tech out of the way, Obito grabbed her hand, linking their fingers together. 

“Worrying about age and whatnot."

"Oh, they said this one will age properly." Hotaru whispered inanely, her thoughts still muddled from all the rapid changes. _She was back... But Obito was here. And he was real._

"Will it? Well that just settles it. But _'they'_? Tell me more about who 'they' are. Though perhaps later. See, I had some time to think while you were gone. Well, I say some. _Twelve days._ " that strange smile had become a fixed grimace but his fingers were still gently curled around hers, a soft and comforting weight.

"I don't think friendship's going to cut it. We’re going back and getting engaged.” he stated.

She looked at him blankly and he silently stared back. His smile fell. His fingers squeezed. After a couple of moments, she realized he seemed to be waiting for something. “We’re going back and getting engaged.” he repeated, still staring intently.

 _Was there a question?_ Heavens, her young man never changed. Always having to be reassured!

“Yes.” she said, confirming anyway.

He laughed, light and relieved, and Hotaru grinned happily before a thought occured.

"What? Now?! Oh, my boy... my grandkids... they-

“We can come visit if you'd like.” Obito offered, then with one final, warning look at the bewildered tech, they disappeared.

* * *

**_Fin_ **

* * *

**Final AN** : I love every one of you guys who took the time to write a review. Your lovely comments were really motivating! A big hug to everyone who read to the end! I'll do my best to answer questions related to the story now that it's finished and spoilers aren't an issue, so don't hesitate to ask.

* * *

 

 **Fun Facts/Fridge Horror** :

* Dead all along: the body Hotaru had in the Elemental Nations was just a self-repairing construct around a temporarily misplaced soul.

* iMind creators had used animals to calibrate the machines moving souls/consciousnesses around. Somewhere, in some different dimensions, there are hundreds of stranded hamsters. Dead hamsters. The souls of dead hamsters.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The Naruto fandom lured me back with lovely stories by lovely authors. In return, I'm bringing a short, self-indulgent fic - another original character insert with a happier ending than Shinobi Tales.
> 
> If there's something you loved, something you liked, something that made you smile, please leave a comment or kudos!


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